Windows is out of my Control

Microsoft Windows is out of my control. I just want to do something simple, render a movie, but the movie render program exits at random about 3 minutes into rendering. The customer support section of the render program web site suggests that I close down all background tasks before I start rendering in case they are interfering with the render. When I watch with the task manager, I see plenty of background processes that pop up from time to time and they may well be the cause of the problem.

However, is absolutely impossible to close down background processes. My system is not owned. I do not have a spyware problem, it is just that I do not have proper control over the components that I have installed on my system. There is an unwanted Windows component that will not go away. I have uninstalled it, however its process still runs and when I kill the process with the task manager it just springs back again after a few seconds. There are other Windows components that are too scary to stop but annoyingly active when they do not need to be.

My video card has two unnecessary background processes. I have managed to disable one, however I cannot find a control to disable the other one. My sound card software has unnecessary background processes that cannot be controlled and when I stop them with the task manager they spring back to life unasked. My CD burner software has several unnecessary background tasks that cannot be controlled in any sane way, and I have spent hours looking through the options dialog boxes for ways of disabling them.

I want to stop the anti-virus program as I know from experience that it can cause all sorts of problems. So I disconnect from the internet and disable it. The problems are firstly that even although I have disabled the anti-virus program its processes are still active and doing things. Secondly, I find out that there is a program that is run periodically to check whether the anti-virus system has been disabled and warn the user. So the total effect of disabling anti-virus to get rid of background processes is just to make extra background processes appear at regular intervals.

All in all it is enough to make me want to give up on Windows and buy a Mac!.

UI and Scripting

One thing that Scott Collins mentioned in his talk tonight on "Mozilla Lessons Learned" at the SDForum Software Architecture and Modeling SIG touched a nerve. He suggested that User Interfaces should be scriptable. This is something that I have believed for a long time.

In my early days I built several interactive user interfaces only to find that their principal use was with scripts. This was before GUIs so you could just feed a script into any UI. The problem was that as I had assumed that the interface was being used interactively it did not handle errors in the script gracefully, and the program would often get wedged.

Recently I have only been tangentially involved in UI design, however there are two things that I have noticed. Firstly, GUIs are notoriously difficult to test, and secondly, as always, any worthwhile application that has a GUI also needs an API for automated access. Consider that a scripting interface can be used to expose programmable access to the application and we get to a thought about how we should be building applications with GUIs.

Instead of designing an application with a GUI, we should be designing the application with a language interface. This makes the application accessible from a scripting interface, and it also allows comprehensive automatic testing of the application through scripts. At the same time the application needs a GUI, which should be generated automatically from the language definition. Because the application is thoroughly tested through its scripting interface and because the GUI is generated automatically, the GUI does not need a lot of testing. Provided that the GUI generator works properly, the application GUI should work properly.

Portable Media Players and DRM

Portable Media Players are arriving to try and catch the next big market for portable media gadgets after the Portable Music Player market has been won by the iPod. As the Register points out, portable music makes a lot more sense than portable video as portable music can be appreciated everywhere and while doing most activities, while portable video requires the concentration of the sense of vision as well as hearing and should not be used while driving, operating heavy machinery, or a lot of other things.

Another problem with Portable Media Players is that they do not work with the media that you own. So while your iPod comes with software so that you can rip your CDs and load them for your listening pleasure, ripping your DVDs for your Creative Zen is either impossible or difficult depending on who you listen to.

This shows how shortsighted the copy protection that is being built into DVDs is. Unlike audio, which you listen to again and again, most video content is consumed by watching it once. Sure, it is nice to have so that you can watch it for a second time, and it is good to be able to revisit your favorite scenes, but except for children, video content is not the kind of thing that you watch over and over again.

The Personal Media Player allows people to consume content while they are on the go and thus it allows them to increase their media consumption. Copy protection on DVDs prevents people from consuming media on DVDs and thus limits the market for DVDs.

The Half Life of Knowledge

I know that I am coming to this meme late, however it is central to understanding intellectual property. The common statement is that knowledge has a half life. It is easy to argue against this simplistic statement, and I would state it slightly differently to capture the underlying idea. The value of knowledge, or for that matter any intellectual property, has a half life, and by value, I mean monetizable value. There may be a lot of value in common knowledge, but it is difficult to use it to gain some advantage that results in a large pile of cash because it is common and shared by all.

It is the long term fate of intellectual property to become common knowledge, it is rightful that this is the case. Most importantly, it is better for the intellectual property to become free and commonly shared, because the alternative is for it to languish and be forgotten.

A good example is Mickey Mouse. It is rumored that copyright has been extended in the USA principally at the behest of The Disney Corporation who wants to keep all the rights to their creations since the company was founded in the 1920's. The problem is that because Disney keep such a tight control on Mickey Mouse and friends he is being forgotten and the brand is being devalued. If Disney would only let go, others could broadcast the cartoons and advertise the brand at no expense to Disney.

Serious Intellectual Property like patents can also languish if they are too tightly controlled or sequestered for too long. One way this can happen is that the tight control forces the rest of us to look for alternatives, and when we find alternatives, the original idea loses value.

So this is the point. Intellectual property loses value over its life whether we want it to or not. It is better to accept this as a fact and acknowledge that Intellectual Property should become common and shared by all, because as a society we all gain from it. Lock it up and we lose it.

Getting Indexed

Blogger is owned by Google. Great service, the only thing is that Google does not index my blog! On the other hand Yahoo does! What am I to think?

P.S. I am having a really interesting day. The Blogger spell checker does not have the following words in its dictionary: "Blogger", "Google", "blog", however it does have "Yahoo"!

The Open Source Dilemma

It is easy to dismiss Free Software as the dabblings of a bunch of geeks on the fringe. Open Source software is another matter. Open Source is about business, making a profit and in the end, economic domination.

There are many motives for an enterprise adopting the Open Source model. For a small startup company, Open Source can be about creating a cheap and effective distribution channel. If you look at the income statement of a typical software company, sales and marketing is the single largest expense, and most of that money goes to the inefficient one-on-one process of a salesmen persuading a customer to spend a lot of money on the software package. As a Venture Capitalist might say, it is a process that is difficult to scale.

On the other hand, Open Source is like try before you buy. The game is to persuade as many people to download the product and try it out as is possible. Only after they have tried it out, found that it works and go to put it into production, do they discover that there are plenty of good reasons why they should pay for the product, or at least for support. Selling is a subtle job of positioning, partnering with other successful Open Source products and plain old getting the word out. Even so, the Open Source product is cheaper than the conventional software package because you do not have to pay the odious salesman their hefty whack.

A more interesting game is played by large companies who use Open Source for economic warfare. Open source can be used to weaken a competitor by destroying their economic value. It is a game that the larger, stronger, more diversified and aggressive company wins. A well known example, although not exactly open source is the Microsoft and Netscape saga. Netscape's principal product was a browser that they were selling for a modest sum. Microsoft killed the market for browsers by giving away their Internet Explorer with the operating system.

Interestingly enough, as a part of their war on Netscape, Microsoft opened up the source of Internet Explorer, and licensed it relatively cheaply to companies that wanted to build their own browser based product. When Netscape looked at their code, they discovered that they could not respond. Game and set to Microsoft, however it is not clear whether the match is over yet. Netscape rewrote their code and it has been released as the Open Source Mozilla browser. With security problems swirling around Internet Explorer, Mozilla has a chance of making a comeback.

IBM is an example of a big company that is actively supporting a number of Open Source initiatives for various purposes. IBM has helped develop Linux. One reason is that Linux can extend the life of the mainframe. However, a side effect is the Linux has developed to the point where it is getting to be a contender for the desktop, and thus capable of sucking some of the air out of Microsoft's lungs.

Another IBM product, Websphere is connected with the Apache Open Source web server, and IBM continues to donate software to the Apache Foundation. IBM also took an also ran development environment and turned it into the leading IDE by making it Open Source. IBM sells hardware and services as well as software, so giving away a little software to help grease the skids for an integrated sale of hardware, software and services is an excellent tactic. In fact, giving away the software to sell the hardware was standard operating procedure at IBM for many years.

So now we come to the Open Source dilemma. The first thing is to realize is that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Any software that you select is going to cost you money, and the cost of the software license is only part of the total cost. You need to pay for the implementation of the software and the hardware that it runs on. You need to train staff to manage and use the software, and you need staff to keep it running.

Thus, you are making an investment by selecting software package even if the package itself is free, and you need to protect that investment. If you do not have a relationship with the entity that produces the software, you do not have any control, and the investment is at risk. There are many types of relationship that you could have, offering code or other services in return, but the easiest way to have a relationship is to pay for it.

The core of the dilemma is that by choosing an Open Source system you may be getting involved in a battle of the giants. In any battle there is going to be a winner and a loser and while the battle is going on, anyone near the field of battle risks being trampled. When selecting Open Source software you need to do due diligence, looking not only at the resources and stability of the producers of the package, but also their motives and the likelihood that they will prevail.

R Unmasked

We were midway through the presentation on R when I got it. R is a programming language for doing statistics and we were looking at a code sample. I said "R is just APL without the Greek symbols", and that is what it is! In practice there is a language called J that really is APL without the Greek symbols, but R is close enough.

DRM Undercurrents

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is heating up to the point where it is now starting to bubble. I have already talked about Laurence Lessig. In the latest Dr. Dobbs, Jerry Pournelle worries about losing his livelihood if DRM is not enforced. Cringely has written a couple of uncharacteristically paranoid columns about Microsoft and DRM.

One Cringely column is about how Microsoft wants to control USB so that information cannot escape from PCs. There are so many other ways that information can leak out of a PC, including CD and DVD writers, and the network connection, that controlling the USB does not seem interesting even if it can be done. On the other hand, the column on Microsoft security is more interesting as it shows one direction that Microsoft could be headed with its next version of the Windows.

The column suggests that Microsoft with its new focus on security is looking to lock down everything on the PC so that content providers can safely distribute their digital goods on Microsoft Windows and get their pound of flesh. Other rumors about Microsoft support this view, and Ballmer himself went out and started dissing the iPod as the music thief's dream. I have always thought of Ballmer as a clown, and this behavior is typical.

When Steve Jobs conceived the iPod, he knew that he had to set up a reasonable system that would satisfy and reassure both the people who want to sell music and the people who want to buy music. So Apple devised their system and went out and sold it to the music labels. For taking this initiative and doing it right, he has earned success and a lot of respect. On the other hand, Microsoft is in too much of a hurry and they have adopted the bully and bluster of their CEO, a style that is guaranteed leave them friendless.

Microsoft is not the only game in town. If they come out with a platform that is so tied up in DRM that it is annoying and difficult to use, they could loose their entire franchise.

A Long Tale

The Long Tail seems to be everywhere. Tonight at the SDForum Emerging Technology SIG, we had a panel discussion on Music and Metadata, inspired by the Long Tail. At the same time Scott Rosenberg 's blog has some musings on blogs and what constitutes a successful blog, also inspired by the Long Tail.

While all this collaborative filtering stuff is interesting, I wonder how useful it really is. For example, my Netflix queue is at least 2 years long, and seems to grow every time I look at it. However they are always badgering me to rate movies so that they can recommend more. Well I have news for Netflix, I do not need any recommendations, I already have enough to keep them profitable for some time to come.

Real Time Analytics and the Dashboard Metaphor

Today, at the Power Pub on the Future of Analytics, the dashboard metaphor was taken out for several drives. With the excellent leadership of Richard Probst of SAP, we compared and contrasted Business Intelligence, the Balanced Scorecard and Analytics, and we also discussed the Real Time Enterprise. My contribution is that by making a small change to the metaphor, we can explore and understand the real time information requirements of the enterprise.

The notion of the dashboard is that as the executive or manager drives their enterprise, they need a set of indicators to show that they are on the right track, and these indicators are called a scorecard or dashboard. There were many riffs on the dashboard theme at the meeting. Someone even brought up the navigation system where the invariably female voice tells you, without the slightest trace of emotion, "Wrong way!" and then, without a hint of resignation, says "Planning a new route".

The problem with the dashboard metaphor is that driving a car is a singular effort, while driving an enterprise is a team effort, involving many different people who each have their own role to play. A better metaphor than steering an auto with the aid of a dashboard is navigating a ship. The captain, taking into consideration many factors including weather, channels, tides etc. plots the course and gives it to the helmsman. To keep the course, the helmsman watches the compass and continually makes minor changes to the helm to keep the ship on course.

In an enterprise, the executives plot a course like the captain of a ship. Executive decisions take time and consideration, they are planned for weeks and may take months to execute. Executives do not need real time information to make their decisions. On the other hand, like the helmsman, the people who are running the business day to day, hour to hour, or minute to minute, need to make constant small changes in course to keep the enterprise on track. These are the people who need up to date information to make the best decision. Thus real time or is it is often called right time information is the province of operational decision makers.

Real time information has many implications about how we construct our analytic information systems that will have to be discussed anon.